While state police and the cold case unit accuse David B. McLeod of being responsible for four deaths, Marion A. Newstead of Gilsum is seeking acknowledgement of his responsibility for a life.
Newstead and McLeod had a daughter together, Deanne Rose Tedford, born in 1983. According to Newstead, McLeod never paid child support and barely contacted her at all.
Hearing about his recent arrest has left her and her daughter emotional.
"I heard it on TV and it startled me out of a dead sleep pretty much," Newstead said Friday. "I hadn’t heard that name in years."
McLeod is accused of setting a fire at a High Street apartment building in Keene that resulted in four deaths in 1989.
He was living with his wife and two sons in California when he was arrested late last month.
In a recent interview with The Sacramento Bee, McLeod’s wife Kathy McLeod described him as the quintessential family man, husband and father.
Newstead had a different story.
"She didn’t know him,tiffany bangles," Newstead said of Kathy McLeod. "She didn’t know what he’d done here."
Newstead said she and her daughter spoke shortly after learning about McLeod’s arrest.
"She called me in tears; I could feel her shaking through the phone," Newstead said. "There is a lot of pain with finding out your blood father is in jail."
Tedford, now 27 and with two children of her own, spent only minimal time with her father when she was very young.
Hearing about his other family was painful to her,tiffany necklaces, she said.
"He has a whole other family and his wife says that he taught them baseball; he didn’t teach me baseball," Tedford said, trying to stifle sobs. "He didn’t teach my anything."
Newstead, then Marion Tedford, met McLeod in 1979. She was smitten right away, she said, and they began dating.
"He has that character about him; he’s smart and educated," Newstead said. "He sold real estate, drove a nice car, dressed in suits. I couldn’t imagine he wanted to go out with me. I’m a country girl; I didn’t have money."
But she would find that he made poor decisions when drinking, she said.
Newstead became pregnant with their daughter in 1982. When McLeod found out, he was upset and said he did not want the baby,tiffany cuff Links, Newstead said.
McLeod left for Arizona soon after he found out about the pregnancy and returned a year later, Newstead said. It’s a move he would repeat following the 1989 fire. He told her in 1982 he was looking for jobs and a house and that he would send money, she said.
He corresponded infrequently and did not send money, according to Newstead. He did not return until Deanne was 3 months old.
"When he did come back in ‘83, I had animosity," Newstead said. "He just left me high and dry. I was devastated."
Newstead told him to leave and raised Deanne herself until meeting her next boyfriend a little more than a year later. They married and had a child of their own.
An acquaintance talked Newstead into letting McLeod into her home to spend time with his daughter at Christmas in 1988. He bought her toys and outfits.
But the reconciliation wouldn’t last long. The fire was Jan. 14, 1989, and McLeod left for Arizona soon afterward.
Deanne Tedford recalls receiving stamps in the mail from her father when she was a child. She started a stamp collection because he sent them to her, but eventually those stopped as well.
They didn’t speak again until she was 16 and pregnant with her first child. Newstead arranged in 2000 to have McLeod’s brother Charles McLeod call him so that she and Tedford could speak to him.
"We called him on the phone in California," Tedford said. "He wanted to fly me out there. I told him I was all set and that I had done without him for 16 years and that my sister’s father had raised me and took me in as his, so I pretty much just didn’t need him."
Having heard the way he treated her mother and felt the hurt he caused by leaving, Tedford said she did not want to travel to see him.
Following McLeod’s arrest, his mother and siblings released a statement.
Newstead said she was upset that her daughter with McLeod was not mentioned in McLeod’s family’s statement, which mentioned his other children.
"She’s 27 years old," Newstead said. "I just want justice for my child; I want her recognized."
McLeod’s family did not answer multiple calls for comment.
McLeod has waived an extradition hearing, and will be transported back to New Hampshire in the coming weeks.
He is currently in the Yolo County Jail in California.
Prosecutors will not discuss a motive in the apartment fire, but say the four victims — Carl R. Hina, 49, Lori M. Hina, 26, Lillian M. Hina,tiffany pendants, 4 months old, and 12-year-old Sara Jean Hina — were not targeted.
McLeod is charged with four counts of second degree murder. If convicted, he he could face life in prison.